A variety of fields would benefit from the size reduction of mechanical structures. By way of example, minimally invasive surgery requires a full complement of surgical instruments capable of operation with a remote manipulator with the instruments operating within an endoscope. To satisfy these requirements for miniaturized devices, mesoscale components must be produced with complex shapes, from a variety of materials, and high manufacturing tolerances. Existing manufacturing techniques are inadequate as failing to satisfy one or more of these requirements. MEMS are capable of forming complex shapes, the etch techniques limit material choices to crystalline and amorphous silicon and inorganic silicon compounds such as silicon oxides. Additionally, MEMS etch and lithography techniques fail to maintain tolerances in high aspect ratio components and are not applicable in polycrystalline materials. Other conventional fabrication techniques such as CNC machining and precision wire EDM lack sufficient control to provide the complex shapes and small feature sizes and high tolerances that would be required. Additionally, other machining techniques capable of producing complex shapes such as chemical etching, focused ion beam etching or fast atom beam machining, while having many attributes that are attractive to production of such mesoscale components, only produce single components at a time and are limited as to the materials that can be so machined.
The inability to form polycrystalline complex shaped mesoscale components has limited advancements in a number of fields as the mechanical properties of the component cannot be controlled to the same degree in crystalline or amorphous materials. Owing to the forces such components would experience in a variety of environments such as surgery or subterranean sampling, a high degree of strength and resistance to catastrophic failure must be incorporated into such a mesoscale component.
Thus, there exists a need for a polycrystalline complex shaped mesoscale component and a process for producing the same. There further exists a need for such a component containing an inhomogeneous grain structure or reinforcing filler.